


Alternia Fuck Yeah

by Writefuck



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternian Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1744646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writefuck/pseuds/Writefuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A roundabout discussion of galactic civilization's dealings with the Trolls.  Basically short stories that can be read in any order. Contains some discussions of violence and war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Contact

Let's take a minute to discuss the Xendar Classification of Alien Civilizations. Who was Xendar, you ask? That's a common misconception - the Xendar were a race, not a person. The Xendar were one of the older space-faring civilizations, and are widely regarded as the oldest that we still have concrete record of. They were a race of peaceful explorers who were known as the sort of librarians and bookkeepers of the galaxy. They went around space looking for sentient life forms, and ranked them on a scale of zero to five, in regards to their cultural, spiritual, technological, and military development. Not everyone in the galaxy was flattered to be labeled like this, and more than a few species had a pretty strong dislike for the Xendar. That being said, pretty much nobody actually HATED them. The Xendar at their worst was nosey and annoying. At their best, they were a useful source of information. It also helped that Xendar star drives were probably the most reliable and long-lasting designs in the galaxy, although they weren't necessarily the fastest or the cheapest.

So how did their rating scale work? Well as I said it went from zero to five, and I'm going to start with three. See, the Xendar knew full well that trying to assign an objective classification to how "advanced" an alien civilization is was a waste of time. How do you objectively rank something that doesn't have a definitive "best it can possible be" or "worst it can possibly be?" What they did instead was rank things in relation to the Xendar themselves. It's a waste of time to rank something like military strength on a scale of "wimpy" to "badass," but assigning a value like "able to destroy my people" and "not able to destroy my people" is something that anybody can understand.

So, starting at three. Three basically means "overall, they are on-par with us. They may exceed us in some respects and we may exceed them in some respects, but in general we are rough equals." It's important to note that this doesn't take into account the rate of a race's advancement; someone may be a three now, but in a decade they could be higher, lower, or the same. Doesn't matter.

Four means "they are more advanced than us. There may be specific areas where we are ahead of them, but overall they outclass us in a meaningful way." Scholars have argued for generations what "in a meaningful way" means, but that's a different topic.

Five means "they are more advanced than us, and it is extremely unlikely that we are going to catch up with them." Basically, five is sort of like a four that's going to STAY a four, barring some kind of cataclysmic setback or extinction event. This can be a race that progresses faster, or is just so far ahead that catching up is going to take millennia or longer.

On the lower end of the scale, two means "we are more advanced than them. There may be specific areas where they are ahead of us, but overall we outclass them in a meaningful way." Basically the opposite of the high-end of the scale.

One means "We are more advanced than they are, and it is extremely unlikely that they are going to catch up with us."

Then we have classification zero, which is kind of a strange concept to wrap your head around and doesn't come up very often. Basically this is a race that is not "behind" or "ahead" of you, but is instead totally lacking in that category and is no worse off for it. The best example I can think of is the Brax Collective. The Xendar would rank them as a 0 culturally, because the Brax have a hive mind and the entire race is technically one individual. A single person by definition can't have a culture, so they'd be a zero.

So in summary:

5 - More advanced than us, and we'll never catch up.

4- More advanced than us.

3 - Roughly equal to us.

2 - Less advanced than us.

1 - Less advanced than us, and they'll never catch up.

0 - Not applicable.

And you use these numbers to rate a civilization in the categories of:

Cultural development

Spiritual development

Technological development

Military development

This scale has been adopted by many races across the galaxy, and most of them make their own modifications to it. The Neirah, for example, add a class 6 to the list, used to rank their deities who by their definition are "the fundamental maximum level of possible achievement in all things." The Brax who I mentioned earlier use the same scale, but don't use the cultural ranking and instead add an "autonomy" category.

So the Xendar went around finding sentient life, gathering information about them, and assigning them four ranks of 0 to 5. When they found a friendly species, they opened up diplomatic relations, said hi, traded if they were interested. When they found a hostile one, they fucked off back to safer space and quietly categorized them as well. They also kept tabs on pre-space faring civilizations, generally keeping track of anything that had at least one ranking higher than 1. If a civilization was never going to catch up, the Xendar kind of didn't care about them, but potential equals fascinated them.

See the Xendar had kind of a holy grail of alien species. They wanted to find someone out there who was rated 3-3-3-3, and would stay that way. A lot of races were either inferior to the Xendar, which frustrated them, or started out as equals and then became their superiors. Basically their civilization was looking for a companion race. I guess they were kind of lonely culturally? As old as their race was, I guess they just got tired of zipping around space and were looking to settle down. I dunno.

So one day, a Xendar probe happens upon this gray ball with two moons, then classified as Z0-D1-4C, the planet we now know as Alternia, also known as the exact center of the galactic do-not-go-here-unless-you-want-to-die-horribly zone. I want to stress that at this point in galactic history, pretty much no one had heard of the Trolls. The planet didn't even have an official name, beyond its standard coordinates listing. A couple different civs had passed by the planet, made a little side note that it was habitable and had sentient pre-industrial life on it, and then moved on. Those who know their Protector history will know that it was one of the planets the Myx tried to forcibly colonize before the Protectors declared Crusade and rendered the Myx technically extinct. Beyond that, nobody had heard of Z0-D1-4C.

So the Xendar probe finds the planet, and they start monitoring them from a safe point well outside the range of their lightspeed-or-slower telescopes. We don't have detailed records of what the Xendar xeno-anthropologists were thinking as they watched the Trolls, but we know that for some reason they decided that this primitive planet was worth a closer inspection. So the Xendar sent in a full-sized science vessel, and they parked it in orbit for twelve solar sweeps.

Twelve.

Fucking.

Sweeps.

To put that in perspective, the longest time the Xendar spent examining a race before then was about a tenth of that time, and that was spent watching a race they classified as 3-3-2-3. Their science vessel was there so long, other races started to take notice. "What the fuck are the Xendar doing watching this race of primitives?" Other science vessels stopped by, to see what the hubbub was. Had the Trolls undergone some kind of isolated technological leap and invented something way beyond their expected tech level? Were the Trolls some kind of slapstick comedy race that could entertain an advanced civilization? Did they just do a lot of fucking? Nobody could figure out the Xendar's obsession with them, but I do have my own theory.

See, eventually after twelve sweeps of spying, the Xendar class them as 3-0-2-2. That's three culture, zero spiritual, two technology and military. The zero spiritual rating was actually pretty uncommon back then. Most races develop some kind of "god or "gods" at some point between their prehistoric and preindustrial age. At that level, a race just kind of needs to have something to explain the unexplained to make them feel better about the world. Once you have that kind of thing in your civilization, it's pretty hard to get rid of it entirely. Even once people stop believing in the literal existence of a supernatural being, they still like to feel that something is looking out for them. Most of the races who totally lack this aspect of their civilization are either the coldly logical type who're incapable of fear, or are fucking psychopaths.

So the Xendar had been watching this race for so long that it became a running gag to the rest of the galaxy, and finally they published their findings. The two military didn't surprise anyone - the Xendar weren't warriors, so pretty much anybody was capable of catching up and outpacing them. The two-technology was expected too, since the Trolls were just starting their industrial revolution. The three cultural was a little unusual, but you get that sometimes - some races are just naturally more creative and make entertainment better than war and gizmos. The zero spiritual was the real weird thing though. Nowadays it wouldn't raise any red flags... the galaxy is a lot more grim than is used to be. But back then, if a race has zero in any of its ratings, ESPECIALLY spiritual, someone's going to send in the xeno-anthropologists to figure out why that is. And at this point the Xendar had been studying the Trolls for so long that when they finally published their results, EVERYBODY decided they want to come and take a closer look themselves.

It's important to note that, at this point, the Xendar science vessel had fucked off. They had transmitted their findings back to the Xendar home world and then left Alternia (at this point most people better knew the planet by the Trolls' name for it) in a hurry. Except nobody noticed or cared about the vessel getting the hell out of dodge like that - they just wanted to see the planet.

So literally within a matter of hours, about fifty different ships from various civilizations and alliances show up in orbit around the same planet. It's at this point that things start to get slightly ugly - not every race who was there necessarily got along with one another. None of the ships there were warships, but most of them had at least some offensive capability. There was your usual big-gun waving, a few singed ships sent home with their tails between their legs, but no casualties. Nobody wanted to start a war over the Trolls - they weren't THAT interesting. Not yet anyway.

So at this point you have a bunch of different ships in orbit around Alternia. All of them are science vessels, and collectively they have pretty much every possible science and research instrument you could want between them. Plus, every ship that's left is one that has enough firepower and/or defense to at least get in a fight and not be instantly vaporized. And everyone is watching the Trolls down on the surface, and nobody understands what they're seeing.

What you have to understand is that in these days, nobody knew anything about the Trolls. Most people still just called them "those guys the Xendar are watching." We had no idea the kind of carnage they were capable of. The ruthlessness, the depravity, the all-around being a fucking lunatic asshole to everyone around you for no reason. The... I guess Trollishness is the right word. So when these science vessels take a close, in-depth look at various facets of Troll civilization, and they see nothing but, well, Trollishness, it fucking scares them. But they all think the Xendar found something fascinating there, so they keep watching. And over and over again they see examples of Trolls doing what they do best. There are documented records that the chief science officer of the Neirah ship committed suicide after some of the things she saw. It was fucking traumatizing.

So one after another, the various ships decided they've seen enough, wasted enough time, and leave. Eventually the last ship leaves and Alternia is left alone for a while. The running joke of the Xendar being obsessed with the Trolls quickly turns sour, once we realized what the Xendar had been watching. For a while some of the more warlike races decide to take potshots at passing Xendar ships, angry at them for wasting their time. The Xendar, for their part, stayed quiet and continued exploring and categorizing like they had been before. Everything returned to normal.

Seven sweeps pass.

One day, a primitive FTL transmission is heard broadcast on several channels at once. The language is gibberish because whoever's speaking doesn't have a standard universal translator, or at least isn't using one. A few curious exo-linguists record the transmission, thinking it might be fun to try to decode. Somewhere, somebody plugs it into their system and finds something weird - the language is recognized. They compare it to known languages and find an entry from the Xendar database. The language is Troll. This is still recent enough that people remember the Trolls, but they only see them as "that race that the Xendar were being weird with." People pretty much forgot the Trolls themselves. So everybody is surprised when this primitive pre-space faring race has declared war.

On the entire fucking galaxy.

This is immediately dismissed as a joke. Number one, nobody declares war on the galaxy. Even the Protectors never did something as psycho as that. Number two, nobody who just invented FTL communication is going to actually WIN a war with anybody who has FTL travel. The absolute worst thing that can happen is that a bunch of intergalactic newbies pick a fight with someone meaner than them and get wiped out or enslaved. That's kind of sad for the newbies, but honestly if they were dumb enough to declare war that early into their space faring history, they probably weren't worth feeling sorry for.

So this transmission gets passed around some of the galactic nets, becomes something of a meme, gets remixed as a music track, gets used in SpaceTube Poop videos, the usual. The joke gets old, nobody cares anymore, and most people forget.

Except the Xendar.

At this point the Xendar race had been in something of a decline. Some people said they ran out of places to explore. Some say they annoyed too many of the mean civs. Galactic records show their birthrates were on the decline, and we know that more than half of their stardrive foundries had been shut down with no explanation. But with a race as old as the Xendar, everyone in the galaxy is going to notice when you evacuate the fucking galaxy.

It's kind of obvious in hindsight why the left. They had studied the Trolls far longer than anyone else. They knew the Trolls weren't playing around. But we all just figured the Xendar had explored enough of this galaxy to satisfy their curiosity. They probably just decided to go explore some other galaxy. We knew that the Xendar home world wasn't the planet they originally evolved on - maybe they had decided to go back to wherever it was they originally came from.

People started putting two and two together after the battle of the Protectors' Citadel. For those who don't know the back story, let me explain.

The Protectors were a race rated by the Xendar as 3-4-4-5. They were... honestly, they were galactic assholes. Holier-than-tho. They decided, whether the rest of the galaxy liked it or not, that they were the defenders of truth and justice and protectors of the weak. Whenever one of the bigger military powers attacked a neighbor who was way weaker than them, the Protectors declared Crusade and intervened. Except half the time the Protectors ended up being worse than the guys they were fighting. There are countless historical reports of Protector Paladins murdering civilians in cold blood. They used biological and chemical weapons like other races use rivets. You don't want to know what they did to the Ullar. There's a reason their race has the lowest genetic diversity of any known sentient species. The Protectors taught them a new meaning of the term 'population bottleneck.'

And at the heart of it all was the Citadel. This was the Protectors "home world" although it was really just a huge space station built out of an asteroid. (their original home world was glassed during one of their Crusades. We're not sure why but records suggest that Crusade was actually a civil war, so you can connect the dots) The Citadel was heavily armed, heavily fortified, constantly patrolled, filled with the angriest and most gutsy pilots and commanders, and always had the latest and deadliest weapons and tech the Protectors had come up with. 

So if you know your war story clichés, you're probably expecting the Citadel to fall to an enemy that comes out of nowhere and somehow kicks everyone's ass in like ten minutes. I fucking wish.

The Alternian battleship Antecedent comes out of FTL well inside the Citadel's no-fly zone. Immediately it sets off like a million alarms, and the only reason they don't instantly blow it out of the sky is because they don't recognize the design. It kind of looks like a lot of different races' tech, but doesn't actually match any of them, and it's just sitting there with its pathetically-weak shields up and its engines idling. So the Protectors do what any normal, rational, over-the-top zealots do and send no less than four capital ships to intercept the Antecedent, and politely ask them who the fuck are you and explain one reason why we shouldn't slag your pathetic excuse for a spaceship.

The response they get back wasn't translatable at the time, but the recording has survived to this day and of course translating from Troll is something even the more basic U-trans can do nowadays. The message they sent back, and obviously this is paraphrased slightly so it makes sense grammatically in galactic basic, was:

"Approach this location and perform reproductive acts with the first stage of your digestive track, one who fornicates with their genetic progenitor."

So naturally the Protectors want to blow the ship out of the fucking sky, but they're smart enough to know that, hey, this could be some random asshole trying to spark an intergalactic war or something. There was no way a ship this primitive could do any harm to one of their capital ships (although I do want to point out that, even in this stage, the Alternian battleship was fucking BRISTLING with weapons, they were just too primitive to be a threat) so after repeated hails demanding the ship identify itself which are met with the same response, they decide to board. 

Now, let's be clear here. The Protectors aren't just assholes with big spaceships. A Protector Paladin is genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced, battle-hardenered, highly-trained, and totally loyal to its superiors. Before the battle of the Protectors' Citadel there had not been one single recorded instance of a Paladin disobeying orders, going AWOL, or deciding that maybe he shouldn't be beating the shit out of this alien just because he was told to. We know this because the Protectors kept detailed records and were never the type to try to hide it when someone screwed up or something failed. We also know that the Protectors' brain chemistry was well understood by their scientists, and they knew exactly what drugs to administer in-utero to chemically castrate the parts of their brains capable of rebellious thought. Yes, the Protectors did that. Dicks.

So, I want you to imagine this. You're a Protector Overlord, which is basically the rank of "guy in charge of one of the largest ships in our fleet" and you send in two boarding parties, each made up of six of your totally-loyal totally-badass Paladins, who are each literally incapable of not doing exactly what you tell them. And they're under orders to go to the commander of this unknown asshole ship, and either make him talk or bring him back so you can interrogate him yourself. And after you send them in you get a transmission from your guys saying they're meeting heavy resistance from the enemy aliens, but the enemy's weapons are no match for your guys' personal shields, and the enemy doesn't even HAVE personal shields, and eventually they make it to the bridge and they tell you they have the enemy commander. And you order them to bring him back. You don't bother to specify "unhurt" so you know your guys are going to rough him up a little, but "alive" is implied because your guys aren't morons.

So your guys bring the alien commander to the brig, and you go there to talk with the guy. He's this skinny, orange-horned, gray-skinned motherfucker, bruised and bleeding blue blood all over the place, and you don't know anything about his biology but you doubt his arm's supposed to be bent that way, and he's ranting and raving in a language you don't understand. When you have a technician bring him a universal translator, he calms down enough to actually talk plainly. We have this conversation on record - the first known time a Troll ever talked to an alien.

Protector: Identify your name, species, and planet of origin.

Troll: Torvus. Troll. Alternia.

Protector: What is your ship doing here?

Troll: We're at war, aren't we? We're here to blow up your space station.

Protector: Your ship is slower than our slowest capital ships. Your full complement of weapons would require several minutes of sustained fire to penetrate the shields of our weakest fighters. Your shields aren't strong enough to block the laser-guides of our weapons, let alone the weapon pulse itself.

Troll: I know, it's a piece of shit, right? We had practically every yellowblood on the planet looking through telescope data and pouring over alien brain scans trying to figure out how all those spaceships in orbit worked. Didn't help that everyone's ships worked different. It's a fucking wonder our mess of random shit actually flies - but hey, we made it this far didn't we?

Protector: Do you mean to say that your ship is made of reverse-engineered alien technology?

Troll: Well it's made of Troll tech now. We were going to copy someone else's designs but HIC decided it had to be original. 100% authentic homegrown Alternian ingenuity. All we ripped off was the science.

Protector: HIC?

Troll: Her Imperious Condescension. Our "Supreme muthafuckin ruler, bitch." Her words not mine.

Protector: You mentioned yellow blood, when yours is clearly blue. Was that a translation glitch?

Troll: Huh? No when I said yellowblood I meant fucking yellow. As in the color of grubsauce... you have no idea what that is. Nevermind. Fuck.

Protector: If I understood your correctly, a group of individuals with yellow blood designed your ship.

Troll: Yeah you got it.

Protector: What race was this that helped you design an interstellar vessel?

Troll: What race? I don't understand.

Protector: What alien species gave you the technology that was used to design your ship?

Troll: I don't think you get me. No one gave us tech. The yellowbloods reverse-engineered it.

Protector: What species, specifically, where these yellow-blooded aliens?

Troll: What species..? They were Trolls, mate.

Protector: There are Trolls with yellow colored blood?

Troll: ...yeah.

Protector: And yet your blood is clearly blue.

Troll: Duh dude.

Protector: I see. So there are multiple species of Troll, then.

Troll: Maaaann you aliens are slow, no wonder HIC decided you all had to go. No, look. There's only one species of Troll. Us. We're called Trolls. How ya doin. But Trolls come in different colors. I'm a blueblood, that's why I got to be captain of the inaugural S.S. Blow Up The Fucking Universe. The guys who designed the ship were mainly yellows. The workers who built the thing were mostly orange and lower. Most of my crew is green. My first officer was teal, before your dude splattered her thinkpan all over the console. Thanks for that by the way - bitch was stepping out on me blackwise and I couldn't think of a tactful way to end it when we're stuck together in deep space.

Protector: Some of what you are saying is not translating properly, but I think I understand the gist of it. You've made it clear that your intentions here are hostile, as laughable as that may be.

Troll: Man my aim is to entertain.

Protector: As you have violated Protector-controlled space, and made what technically qualifies as an act of war against us, I have every justification to turn your ship to slag.

Troll: You go right ahead and do that.

Protector: You don't care if your warship is destroyed?

Troll: My warship? Well yeah I care a hell of a fuckin lot if my WARSHIP is destroyed. But the Antecedent? I told you it was a piece of shit. Blow it the fuck up, I don't care.

Protector: You seem to be referring to some other vessel besides your own. What warship are you referring to?

Troll: You slow mate? We're sitting inside it.

Protector: ...you are saying this ship belongs to you.

Troll: Yeah.

Protector: Under what... possible definition of ownership does this ship belong to you?

Troll: Well I own the fleet it's in. I'm pretty sure that means I own the ship too.

Protector: Now you're saying you own this fleet.

Troll: (sighing) Well I guess, technically, none of this shit is MINE, it's really HERS. HIC is just letting me use it. But I'm in charge of like. The finer details. Where to point the pew-pew canons or whatever it's armed with. But yeah. We own your fleet. It's ours. We took it as soon as you got in range of our psychics. I was worried you'd just blast us out of the sky with the guns on your Citadel, but I figured if I said something rude enough you'd come over and investigate, or at least come over and blow us up in person. I'll probably get a medal for that one. Sweetest tactical use of the word "motherfucker" in battle. HIC likes that kind of thing. Anyway you're probably wondering why you can't talk anymore. We read info from the Xendar's species catalog. Your brains are compatible enough with ours that you're all fully vulnerable to our psionics, even more than the shittiest rustblood is. It should've only taken one or two of our guys to pacify your whole crew, and we had thirty. I think your men killed six or seven but we still have plenty. Now we're hijacking your communications system, and speaking of that, thank you for using biotech-based communicators for both FTL and slower-than-light. It makes it real easy to repeat the psychic commands through your entire fleet.

(pause; sound of the Troll groaning as he gets to his feet)

Troll: On behalf of Alternia and her imperious condescension, I accept the Protectors' unconditional surrender. All nonessential personnel, kill each other. Everyone else, drop what you're doing and bring your ships back to the Citadel. To the crew of the Antecedent - once everyone is here we're going home to dump every computer core into our data banks so the yellows can figure out how all this tech shit works. Then our new fleet is going to stay and defend Alternia. We probably just pissed off a whole lot of motherfuckers.


	2. Interrogation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains an interrogation scene described in some detail. I didn't think it was graphic but your mileage may vary.

"Hey, see that guy over there?"

"The guy in the red atmo-suit?"

"No not him, wrong table. Look two tables behind them."

"The Stellian?"

"No, fuck, look to the left. Look where I'm pointing"

"You're pointing at the Stellian."

"Yeah dipshit, that's because they have no hand gestures in their culture so it's not considered rude to point. I'm talking about the gray one."

"Who, him?"

"Holy shit dude don't point directly at him, I don't want to get his attention. Yeah. The gray one wearing the purple and black uniform."

"What about him?"

"Do you know what that fucking is?"

"Uh... looks like a Bozzite to me, I think."

"Are you mentally damaged?"

"Bozzites are the gray-skinned bipeds who like bright colors, right?"

"Bozzites don't have horns, dipshit. They're also herbivorous, and that guy's clearly eating some kind of animal product."

"Okay, so what species is he then?"

"That is an Alternian Troll."

"Holy fuck. No way."

"I'm sure of it. Look at how he's dressed. That's a military uniform. The colored parts are the same shade of purple as that big discolored scar thing on the back of his hand. There's only one civ that I know of whose military uniforms are the same color as their own blood."

"What do you think he's doing here? Do you think we're safe?"

"You're never safe around a Troll. Did you see that interrogation vid?"

"The Bandezian fetish stream?"

"No. What the fuck? You watch that crap?"

"Hey, some of my best friends are into Bandezians."

"Too much information. No, I mean the video where the Dorigarth officer interrogates a captured Troll fighter pilot."

"Oh, that one. I've heard of it and I think I've seen stills, but that's it. What happens?"

"The troll is this little female, cuffed to a chair that's bolted to the ground. They have a psy-jammer in the room just in case she's one of the mental ones. The O2 level is set at Dorigarth  norm which is about 60% of what Trolls usually need. I heard that they hadn't fed her in like a week but I think that part's an exaggeration. I mean how would we even know?"

"Get to the good part."

"A Dorigarth officer walks in, huge guy, at least two meters tall and more than half as wide. He's holding one of those pain sticks they're famous for, the ones that use electro-nervous stimulation, and he has this big toothy grin on his face. She's just watching him, totally passive, almost like she's bored. He closes the door behind him and locks it, and if you know anything about basic military protocol it's obvious that he's not authorized to be there and he doesn't want to be disturbed."

"This isn't going to end in xenophilia is it?"

"No dude, gross. He walks towards her, slow, sort of waving the pain stick back and forth, grinning the whole time. Like 'ooh look at me, I'm a big scary Dorigarth male and you're a defenseless little female and no one's going to come to rescue you.' Creepy as shit."

"This sounds like it's leading to xenophilia."

"Shut the fuck up. So he holds out the pain stick and sort of points it at her face, stops with it like a centimeter away from the bridge her nose. And he just holds it there, all intimidating and shit. And you know what she does?"

"Says something badass and gets tortured?"

"She fucking headbutts it."

"What the fuck? Who in their right mind would headbutt a pain stick?"

"A Troll, clearly, and I don't think we can count them as 'in their right mind.' She gets zapped and she recoils backwards, but she still knocked the stick out of the Dorigarth's grip because he wasn't expecting that."

"Seems kind of dumb to me. All she did was zap herself."

"I'm sure that's what the Dorigarth thought. So he takes a swing at her, catcher her right in the jaw, knocks her head back so hard it hits the back of the chair and you can see later she's bleeding a little from where her scalp hit the edge."

"Ouch."

"Then the Dorigarth picks up the pain stick, and jabs her in the midsection. And she recoils obviously because that's a lot of electricity, but she doesn't make a fucking sound."

"I don't think pilots generally get trained for pain tolerance. That's pretty badass of her."

"See that's what I thought, but I was reading through the comments section and I found out something. Trolls don't react to pain like most sentients do. They feel pain like normal, but it's sort of... not always unpleasant?"

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"It involved some word I can't figure out how to pronounce. Kiss me-something. It's sort of like... a negative emotion experienced positively."

"Huh?"

"The best example I read put it like this. You know when you watch a horror vid, and you know something bad is going to happen, and the suspense is killing you, and then something scary happens and you're terrified?"

"No, I don't know what that's like because I'm not a juvenile female."

"Fuck you, you know what I mean. It's sort of like that, where it's a negative emotion like fear, but you still have fun."

"And they have that with... pain? Isn't that just called masochism?"

"Sort of, but it's deeper than that. It's not just a fetish experienced by some outliers in their species. They all have it because it's tied to their reproduction."

"That's fucked up. So what happened to the Troll pilot? Was she just getting off to the pain stick?"

"Gross man, why do you keep bringing up xenophilia?"

"I just call them like I see them."

"Anyway the Dorigarth is zapping her with the pain stick in different areas, I guess trying to find a sensitive spot and getting mixed results. Finally someone bangs on the door, and he shits a cinderblock. The Troll just gets this huge vicious grin on her face, because she knows that the Dorigarth guy is in big trouble. He unseals the door, and the guy outside is clearly a superior officer because his uniform has like twice as many teeth sewn into it."

"Dorigarth sew teeth into their uniforms?"

"You didn't know that? Every battle they're in, they take a trophy from an enemy combatant they've personally killed. Usually they grab teeth but if the enemy doesn't have them they've been known to get creative. I read in the comments that more than half of his teeth were Troll teeth. The pilot clearly recognizes this because she stops smiling instantly and now she looks fucking furious. Not scared. Furious."

"That's kind of fucked up that random people can identify Troll teeth in a video."

"Try not to think about it. So the officer yells at the first guy and he leaves, then the officer comes in with two guards who stand at the door.  And the Troll looks pissed but she's just sitting there quietly, waiting for him to make the first move. He starts asking her questions and she just stays quiet. He starts pacing back and forth, watching her out of the corner of his eye, like he's waiting for her to do... I don't know, something."

"How long was this fucking video?"

"I'm almost done. So finally she speaks up, and no one can understand her because she's not wearing a translator."

"Are Troll universal translators not implants?"

"I think they have them but they're based on psychic tech so they don't work if you have a psy-jammer. And like I said, there was a psy-jammer in the room."

"Has anyone figured out how to make more of those by the way? Last I heard they were still considered non-replicatable alien technology by all the major civs."

"Yeah ever since the Trolls wiped out the Stellian home planet, the supply of psy-jammers has been steadily shrinking. The Coalition thinks the supply will be exhausted within ten cycles."

"Fuck, dude."

"Yeah. So anyway, she said something nobody could understand and they all just sort of go "huh?" and shrug. The officer realizes he can't interrogate someone he can't understand, and he's like, at a loss for what to do for a moment. And then the Troll just kind of sighs, and starts speaking Dorigarth."

"Wait, the fucking Troll spoke Dorigarth? How the fuck did she know Dorigarth? They only made first contact two cycles ago!"

"That's one of the scariest things about Trolls. They learn crazy fast. And I'm not saying her grammar and syntax were perfect, but she spoke the language well enough to be understood, and that's what counts."

"What did she say?"

"The usual cliché. 'You'll never get anything out of me. You have ineffective reproductive organs and overcompensate by beating up helpless females. One day after Alternia has made your species extinct, we'll colonize your homeworld, rape the land, pollute the air, and live in the seas.' That sort of thing."

"How'd they take that?"

"They're shocked. The Dorigarth turns to one of the guards and says something quietly, but the uploader boosted the audio so you can hear him. He asked the guard if the serum was administered on schedule."

"Woah, wait, serum? As in Dorigarth truth venom?"

"Yeah, the stuff they reverse-engineered from Protector obedience drugs. Apparently they had loaded her up with so much of the stuff, not only should she have been unable to lie or refuse a command, it also should have vitrified half the language center of her brain. She should've only been able to form simple sentences in her native language, and instead she expresses complex ideas _in a whole other language_."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah. So they don't know what the fuck to do at this point. The officer motions for his guards to exit and follows them, but she gets in one last snarky comment before they go."

"What was that?"

"It was in Troll, but the comments had a rough translation. She said, 'Bring back the other guy! He was more fun!'"


End file.
